


There Your Heart Will Be Also

by chewysugar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Gender Identity, Gender Related, Genderfluid Teddy Lupin, Harry Potter Raises Teddy Lupin, Harry Potter is a Good Parent, Hurt/Comfort, Teenage Teddy Lupin, Transphobia, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22019929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: Teddy comes home in tears one day, and naturally, Harry has to be a good dad and figure out what's wrong. Together, they confront a sensitive subject and both grow from the experience.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 184





	There Your Heart Will Be Also

**Author's Note:**

> I returned from a social media hiatus over the holidays to find that yet again one of my childhood heroes has disappointed me. Maybe it’s a lesson in not engaging in parasocial behaviour. Then again, if my relatives can extol the virtues of Ted Nugent and James Woods without ever having known them, then I think I’m allowed to—to borrow a charming Southern colloquialism—find it so cute how JK Rowling doesn’t care what people think of her. That takes a special kind of person. 
> 
> Whilst I may identify as a gay man, I do not pretend to know the trans experience, but I am hoping that this little fic's heart is in the right. If not, then my profuse apologies for anything herein that is offensive or ignorant. But seriously—my ethos is that we oughta respect how our fellow human beings wish to be treated—those who aren’t emotionally or physically abusive dickcabbages—and that the person beneath the carapace is more important than the meathouse.

Used to signs of calamity from both without and within, the sight and sound of his godson bursting through the door of the kitchen with his blue-haired head bowed and tears in his eyes instantly ignited the spark of protection within the soul of Harry James Potter. He sat at the kitchen table, his usual afternoon cuppa in his hand, and stared with his lips parted at Teddy’s retreating form. So shocked by the abruptness of the boy’s sudden appearance was Harry that he could only sit, unblinking, with thoughts of: _what’s wrong, who did this, do I have to jinx a thirteen year old_ , running through his mind with the velocity of a Nimbus 2001.

Only when he heard the door to Teddy’s room slam with emphasis speaking volumes of his plight did Harry find himself roused into action. The shock had worn off, leaving behind the paternal instinct of a territorial hippogriff. It was a good thing Ginny was at The Burrow with James and Albus. Otherwise their little flat wouldn’t have been able to contain the parental energy that burned from the both of them. Harry's, as it was, could have melted scrap iron. 

Setting his mug on the table, Harry stood, and hastened down the hallway. He paused outside Teddy’s bedroom door.Having been infamous for his own tempestuous moods in early adolescence, Harry knew better than to barge in. Auror instincts honed, he listened outside the door, gauging the situation. And yes—there they were: sobs not entirely muffled. 

Somebody—perhaps some whelp in Diagon Alley—had caused his godson some form of distress. Jinxing would be the least of the things Harry would do to whichever little brat had dared to cross Teddy Lupin. 

He knocked. “Teddy? What’s the matter?”

The sobs were instantly stifled. Harry narrowed his eyes. He'd expected this—it was, after all, what he would have done at Teddy’s age, so rife with piss and vinegar, and the poisonous need boys had to try and tamp down anything not under the headers of anger, frustration or entitlement. 

Still, the quickly called, “Nothing,” was enough to raise Harry’s hackles.

Oh really? Nothing had made Teddy, usually so chipper and sunny, come bursting through the door with his eyes red and puffy? Nothing had rendered his usual witticisms into this brisk push-off? It was the Christmas holidays, for Merlin’s sake. One would think Teddy, always so keen on being around his godfather over his grandmother, would have been over the moon at all times. But here they were, and there they had it. 

Harry itched to volley his own sarcastic reply. But he’d learned better than to shove a good thing off a pier just because he was ill-equipped to swim.

Taking a deep breath, he knocked once more. “May I please come in, Teddy? I promise not to do anything that’ll humiliate your sense of teenage disaffection.”

He heard a sound like a hiccup—perhaps Teddy had tried to laugh through his sobs. But he didn’t say no. He didn’t open the door, either, but these were desperate times; and again, Harry knew what it was like to be young, confused and brimming with hormones that made a box of whizzbangs look like a pile of slop. 

“I’m coming in now,” said Harry. He pushed the door open and stepped in. Teddy’s room had remained mostly the same even as he’d grown: posters of famous witches and wizards adorned the walls; some of them were of muggles, which Harry felt a small amount of pride in. 

But the baubles and adornments meant little to him. Teddy was sitting on the edge of his bed, back to the door, head hung. His hair, an electric shade of blue, had lengthened since he’d left the flat that morning. It brushed past the nape of his neck in gentle waves--lustrous, the kind of thing to be envied by anyone reading _Witch Weekly’s_ beauty column. 

He did not make any indication of being aware of Harry’s presence. He just sat, miserable and broken. Once again, Harry’s fatherly side roared at him to seek out whoever had caused him such agony and give it to them thrice over. 

He’d been through enough interactions with well-meaning adults in his own childhood to know better than to force the issue. Instead, he rounded the bed, sank onto the covers, and stared ahead at the floor-length mirror in the corner of the room. If he made any attempt to appease, Teddy’s need for independence would likely cause him to come out swinging. That wasn’t what Harry wanted. He wanted Teddy to tell him in his own time. 

The seconds ticked by. Harry awkwardly scratched at his beard. He cleared his throat several times, wondering if, perhaps, this was a lost cause. 

Then…

“Look at me.” Teddy’s voice sounded so small and broken that it shattered a piece of Harry’s heart. He was always so voluble—the perfect alchemy of his father’s Marauding side and his mother’s need to be counter-culture. Whatever had brought him to this place had been nothing short of devastating. 

So, Harry looked.

Then he looked again.

There was nothing so different as to be noticed at first glance. But on closer inspection, it wasn’t just the hair that had changed. Teddy’s face, having been carved out shockingly fast by the ravages of puberty, had a softness to it now; his lashes were a little bit longer, his lips just that much more full. Had Remus and Dora ever had the chance, and Harry could well believe that the image before him would have made for a picture-perfect daughter. 

“I don’t…” Harry frowned, still trying to deduce what exactly had happened. Then, just as it all clicked in his brain, Teddy gave a defeated sigh. 

“I wanted to try it,” he said softly, looking at the carpet. “I’ve always wanted to try it…just to see if it would feel any different…” Teddy swallowed. “There’s sometimes when I wonder what makes me, y’know… _me_. Not just…” He gestured at his lap. Harry felt his face turn redder than a quaffle. “I don’t know what it all means. Any of it.” Teddy buried his face in his hands. “But that’s why I thought I could at least, y’know…try it. Just to see if changing myself changed me, if that makes any sense.”

This territory was foreign, indeed. Though Harry considered himself to be accepting—Seamus and Dean had been together for years by now, and even he himself had often pondered the mystique of male beauty—he’d never, in his entire life, encountered the kind of quandary that Teddy was now posing. And he, Teddy, was a mere thirteen years old. So young to be debating questions the size of life itself. But Harry knew from personal experience that life cared little for a person’s age when it threw such things at you. 

“So,” he began as tentatively as he could, “you…feel like a girl?”

“I don’t know what I feel!” Teddy suddenly exploded. His fists pounded the blankets. “That’s what I’m trying to say! I thought that changing me would make me feel different, but it doesn’t!”

“Then,” Harry said, letting his heart lead where his addled brain was lost in a thicket of misunderstanding, “perhaps that’s all there is to it, isn’t it?”

Teddy stared, lips parted. 

Seizing the tether before it could slip through his grasp, Harry smiled as encouragingly as he could.

“Look, Teddy—I’m not going to lie. I don’t completely understand what you’re going through, but if you’re concerned about me or anyone else…y’know, _disowning_ you or some rubbish like that, then the answer is no. You just said it yourself. You don’t fee like a different person based on whether or not you’re a girl or a bloke. So maybe that’s all the answer you need. Maybe there is no difference. Maybe there’s just this…” He poked Teddy just below the collarbone, at the spot where his heart beat like a scurrying rabbit. “Maybe there’s just the soul of you—and that soul is pretty damn good from where I’m sitting. Kindhearted, clever, mischievous, and doesn’t know when it’s time to do the damn dishes after dinner.”

Teddy laughed, and wiped at the streaks on his cheeks. “But why,” he said after a moment, “do we have to have these stupid categories, Harry? Why do people have to say that only blokes can do certain things or behave a certain way, or that girls have to be a certain way to be girls? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“No.” Harry nodded. He’d never really contemplated it before; but he saw this conversation like a path through a dense forest: if only the two of them could wend carefully along the road, they’d emerge at a better and brighter place. “No, it really doesn’t. You know how they say men aren’t supposed to cry? Or show emotion? You know how they say girls are supposed to be obedient and proper?”

Teddy snorted. “Yes, and it’s rubbish.”

“It is. And how many men and women in your life do you know who fit neatly into those categories?” He spread his arms. “Look at me. I am a weeper. I openly weep, and I always have. Look at Ginny. She’s more hotheaded than a lorry driver.”

“Then why do we it?”

Harry sighed, arriving at the solution like one following a treasure map that led to nothing more than an ant hill. “Because people do not like things that are complicated. People like things fitting neatly into boxes. Like the Sorting."

"The Sorting? Isn't that an important part of Hogwarts?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm not so sure anymore. The older I’ve gotten the stupider I’ve found the idea of separating people based on what’s inside their heads and hearts.” Something from his past came swimming to the surface. “It’s our choices, Teddy, far more than our abilities--who we decide to be in spite of what we are, that matters. And whether or not you decide to be a boy or a girl, I’ll still love you. So will Ginny, and your Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione. So will anyone worth their salt as a friend. And if you want us to start referring to you as, y’know…a girl, then we’ll do that. It’s your life, Teddy. We’re supposed to respect each others lives.” 

Teddy smiled. Then he leaned his head against Harry’s shoulder, and Harry immediately wrapped a supportive arm around his godson. Would that he’d times like this with Sirius. But Teddy had been his chance to live through the people—the family—he’d lost; to nurture and love and protect and, yes, understand. 

For a long while they simply sat like that, the silence comfortable between them. 

“Is that why you were upset?” Harry finally asked. “Because you couldn’t understand?”

Teddy shook his head, and righted himself. “No. Not entirely. It was just that…well, I went over to the Douglas’s place—they were having a party, see? And I thought if I went like this they’d all think it was really cool. Mattie and Jason are always asking me to change my nose and stuff. But this…” He sighed. “They all laughed at me. They said it was too much, and that I was really a freak if I could metamorph into a different gender.”

Harry’s blood began to boil like a tea kettle. 

Teddy ran his fingers through his hair. His voice began to quaver again as he went on. “They were all laughing so loudly...Mrs. Douglas came into see what was the matter…I hadn’t changed back, because I really didn’t feel like it. Mattie said that I was a girl now, and Mrs. Douglas said…” His breath shuddered, but he went valiantly onward. Harry felt rather proud of the touch of anger he heard in his godchild’s voice. “She said that I could do whatever I wanted to my hair, my face, or my body, but that a boy was still a boy and if I thought any other way then I needed to get my act together.”

The simmering fury turned to explosive wrath. Harry stood before he could stop himself and burst out, “The complete bitch!”

“Harry!” Teddy half-laughed, half-gasped. 

“No, I mean it!” Harry began to pace. “Thinks she can go around and dole out her ignorant bollocks on children—

“Teenager,” Teddy amended.

“--teenagers, as if it’s entirely up to her to determine how the world works.” His face prickled with wrath, and his knuckles itched. He wanted to apparate to the Douglas’s and show the old wench just what happened when someone messed with a Potter. 

“Really,” Teddy said, all supplication now. “It’s alright.”

Harry rounded on Teddy. “You listen to me right now. Never say that someone else making you feel inferior is ‘ _alright_.’ Not only does it give them permission to treat you like dirt, but you give yourself the same kind of leeway.”

“Mrs. Douglas isn’t a bad person,” Teddy squeaked. “She’s done a lot of good…donated to charities for muggle support, helped with reconstructing Hogwarts—

“That doesn’t excuse it, Teddy.” Harry all but stomped his foot. The rage was cycling through him like a pinwheel. He took several deep breaths, willing himself to calm down. It was a practice he’d endeavored in when he and Ginny had practically adopted Teddy, and it had served him well in raising James and Albus. 

“It’s a paradox,” Harry went on. “And they’re allowed to exist. People can do the kind of charitable, noble things as that woman and still have blind spots like this. She might come round to changing her mind, but she might not. Not everyone is going to understand you, Teddy, but those people aren’t important.”

Teddy shook his head. Harry watched as his hair began to recede from the long, wavy locks back to its usual length. The smoothness worked its way out of his features, and once more, he looked like who he’d been when he’d left the flat that morning. 

“Maybe it’s too confusing,” Teddy whispered, pain flickering in his eyes. “After all, it’s not like wizards are famous for being open-minded. Maybe I should just…not bother.”

Once again, Harry took a breath. “Here, stand up.” He gestured at the mirror. “In front of me, please.”

Regarding him with adolescent surliness, Teddy did as he was told. Harry, much taller, loomed over him. They looked, together at their joint reflections. Erised showed that which the heart desired, but mirrors, Harry knew, could be deceiving. It didn’t matter what the glass showed you—in fact, it was often more treacherous. 

“Close your eyes.” Harry instructed. After a moment’s hesitation, Teddy did as he was told. 

“I want you to listen to what I say, and not what you think,” Harry went on. “You, Teddy Lupin, are incredible. Out of the billions of things on the face of this earth, you’re the only one of you. Nobody is smart the way you’re smart; nobody has the exact same sense of humor as you. Nobody is as hard-working the same way you are, or has the exact same capacity for compassion and love…” A lump of emotion worked its way into Harry’s throat. He noticed Teddy’s face, scrunched up with disbelief and irritation, begin to soften. He really was, after all, listening. 

“Nobody has the same fears and sadnesses,” Harry continued. “Nobody has the same likes and dislikes exactly like you; nobody likes the same foods, or same books, or music, or games. Your ugly emotions and thoughts aren’t the same as anyone else’s on the face of the planet no matter how similar they might appear, because you are the _only_ Teddy Lupin. Now, I want you to tell me exactly what in the name of Merlin your sex characteristics have to do with that…”

He trailed away, watching Teddy’s reflection. He hoped, in the way he had each time Ginny had gone into labor—a desperate plea that hinged upon life itself. Because he knew that if Teddy continued to be force-fed the backwards notions of a confused world that he’d live a life half-happy, and that, Harry knew, was no way to live at all. He would resent, and anguish, and nobody deserved that. Least of all someone was amazing as the blue haired child before him. 

Teddy’s chin quivered. His lids parted, and he turned big, brimming brown eyes to his godfather.

Harry smiled, knelt down, and took Teddy by the shoulders. “See? It’s just…it’s just something people made up, to make it less confusing. It’s like time. Or being a Gryffindor. It’s just a tool that we use, and if you want to use it your own way, then to fiery hell with anyone else. But you’re going to have to be strong, Teddy—a lot stronger than I was at your age. It can be so uncomfortable trying to fit into your own skin on the best of days. But when you've got people like Mrs. Douglas to contend with, it can be excruciating.” And that, Harry knew, was where he came in.

Teddy nodded, and tears trickled down his cheeks once more. “I still don’t know just yet,” he said quietly. 

“Of course you don’t.” Harry stood, giving his godchild some space. “You only just started being aware of these things. Believe it or not I went through puberty.”

Teddy grimaced. “I’d rather not think about that.”

Harry barked a laugh. Even to his own ears it sounded so much like Sirius that he felt the breath leave his lungs for the briefest of moments. “Whatever the case may be, just remember that I’ll still be here. I promise you that, Teddy. It might not seem like a lot, but one person on your side can be the difference between despair and hope.”

Teddy nodded. Then, he took an impulsive step forward, and flung his arms around Harry’s middle. His face pressed into Harry’s chest, tears seeping through the fabric of Harry’s shirt. “Thank you, Harry” he said, his voice muffled. 

Chuckling warmly, Harry ruffled Teddy’s mop of sky blue hair. “Of course, Teddy. Any time.”

Teddy stepped back, and wiped at his eyes. His stomach gave a pronounced grumble. “Guess I better eat something.”

“Just make sure to leave and inventory list. The last time you scarfed down what was in the fridge, it cost us two weeks of groceries.”

“Hey, I’m still growing!”

Harry laughed again. Teddy made for the door, head held a little more high. Just before he disappeared through the door, Harry called out, “Wait a minute!”

Looking back, Teddy said, “Yeah?”

“Just for now, what do you want? To be called, I mean.”

Teddy cocked his head to the side. Then he gave an easy shrug. “Until I figure it out, I guess I’ll just go with being a boy.”

“Okay then. But you will let us know, won’t you? Just so we can make you more comfortable?”

Teddy grinned. “Of course.” With that, he left the room, his earlier anguish now nothing more than a ghost that hovered over the carpet. But Harry knew it would return; they were all still new to this after all. Fortunately, he considered himself something of an authority on banishing unwanted evils.

He looked over his shoulder at his own reflection. He saw past the dark shadows under his eyes, the bristly beard, shaggy hair and even the old scar on his forehead. Then, he too closed his eyes, and looked into himself—to the soul that Dumbledore had always commended him for possessing. Beyond years of trauma and strife, he found a glowing little speck, burning brighter and hotter the longer he looked at it. 

He opened his eyes, and grinned to himself. 

_Go figure_ , he thought as he too left the room. Dumbledore had been right all along. Love really was the greatest weapon and shield human beings possessed.

And he would use it for Teddy no matter what—especially in the face of close-minded, self-righteous shrews like Mrs. Douglas. 

**Author's Note:**

> We are living on a speck of rock and water that, compared to our nearest star, is the size of an ear-piecing, which could be struck by a rock the size of Texas, sucked into a space vacuum, or rendered inhabitable due to our poisoning of the ecosystem. You would think we’d all be willing to take our boots off each other’s necks and have a little mercy—maybe let people live their joy—but that seems to be oddly difficult for some people—and shockingly, people who have made their unwashed billions off of a book series that preached tolerance, equality and love as its core themes.
> 
> Ahem…please let me know what you think, even if it’s to educate me. Because again, I feel I could stand to learn more about how to be a trans ally. Which, apparently, can’t be said of Oxford graduate and humanitarian JK Rowling.


End file.
